


when the black bird flies

by asexuelf



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Elf/Elf Relationship(s), F/M, Fenris (Dragon Age) has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Sweet Merrill (Dragon Age), the canon dialogue fenris has about suicidality is very interesting to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24862666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexuelf/pseuds/asexuelf
Summary: Merrill hasn't heard from Fenris in a while. She deigns to check on him.
Relationships: Fenris/Merrill (Dragon Age)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	when the black bird flies

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a rough one akdjwjdjsk i've been picking at this fic here and there when i was low these past months, but i think it's finally something i'm happy to share
> 
> hope you enjoy 💖

Merrill balances the basket under her arm with feigned casualty, a slightly dishonest smile on her round face. It's bright out, making her squint against the sun, but she's glad to have something else to blame the tears in her eyes on as she walks. The basket is full of chocolate biscuits, which should be a happy thing, but her stomach is full of knots.

The truth is, she's uncertain. Nervous. _Scared._ It's been a little too long since she's heard from a certain broody lyrium elf and she's more than a small amount afraid of what she may find when she enters the haunted mansion he calls a home. She knows the melancholy he falls into. She falls into it too.

The stone beneath her feet grows whiter and cleaner the closer she comes to reaching Fenris' mansion. The dusty grey stone of Lowtown is well behind her by the time she's knocking on the unlocked back door, watching dust rise in the bright sunlight. The door's dirty, a bit overrun with green-brown foliage and barely-there cobwebs, but it's obvious to anyone with the eyes to see it that it's opened often. Fenris never locks it.

Funny, how he'll gripe at her for leaving her own door unlocked, and then sleep on that gold-stuffed mattress of his like a dragon over its hoard with not a thought for his own safety.

Merrill thinks of his safety now. She adjusts the basket beneath her arm again and hopes there's an elf to be fed behind the door. Intruders can be easily fought off, but Fenris' worst enemy is with him always.

She knocks again. Still no answer.

Well, no matter. No matter! Her stomach is sick to think that her _vhenan_ , her dear friend, might be-

And so she doesn't think, instead silencing her mind as she opens the door herself, forcing her smile back onto her face. Fenris must just be sleeping. Yes, of course. It's quite late in the afternoon, anyhow; she lost track of time again while working on the mirror. Fenris' sleep schedule is such a finicky thing - melancholy will do that - and he does so like his midday cat naps.

He'll wake up from this one. She walks through the dim hallways, stepping delicately over too-dark stains and the mouse-bitten holes in the carpet. He has to wake up from this one. He has to.

She makes it through the main room, past the kitchens now and up the stairs. It’s so _creepy_ here, always so dark even with the distant daylight streaming through the too-high windows, casting shadows across the floor and painting dust motes floating in the air. There’s a lot of dust. Cobwebs, too. Maybe more than usual.

The stairs. She focuses on the stairs. They creak beneath her, but not enough that she fears she’ll fall through them. Would be an awful waste of a visit if she went and plummeted through the-

It’s when she reaches the top that the smell hits her. Merrill chokes on it, covering her mouth, gasping. Then she turns and runs.

*

When she reaches the clinic in Darktown, she’s out of breath and coated in sweat. She’s never run like this in her life, not even that time her clan ran into a whole group of bears. Her legs hurt, but she barely feels them.

“Please,” it comes out in a whisper, strangled and afraid. Anders’ eyes grow wide to see her, brown flashing blue so quickly she almost thinks it's firelight catching her eyes. “Please, the mansion, he’s-”

She can’t continue. She begins to cry, pulling at Anders’ robes weakly. _Follow, follow me, please_.

Anders shouts something back at his assistants and follows. If her legs protest, she doesn't notice.

*

Slow as an arrow through the shoulder, a day passes. Then two. Merrill sits in Fenris’ room, in a chair beside the fire, and thinks.

“Thank you for coming to get me,” Anders had said. 

He’d looked drawn and sad, drying his hands with a small towel from his belt as he avoided her eyes. She'd tried not to focus on the dark red stains on that towel, and failed.

“He should be alright.”

She’d nearly jumped out of her skin - with fear or with joy, she doesn’t remember. “But- the _smell._ ”

A humorless laugh left him, more shock than mirth. “This place always smells like that. Somebody had tried to kill him, I think; there's bits of the body hanging around still new enough to stink. And- And then afterwards-” He swallowed. He didn’t continue; didn’t have to.

Afterwards, Fenris had tried to kill himself.

Whatever he'd done hadn't been enough to end his life, but he'd been close to it for days, half-poisoned and half-bled out. Merrill had asked Anders to stop explaining then. The thought was too horrible.

 _If only I'd gotten here sooner,_ she thought, then shook it from her head. Gotten here and what - immediately been nicely eviscerated by Fenris' would-be assassin? Nonsense. But, maybe if it had only been a few days earlier…

Merrill swallows down bile. She should have- _something._ Should have realized, somehow. Someway.

He looks small in the bed, even tall as he is, all underfed lines and soft sadness. There's no dignity to him, smelling and starved in his own bed, but at least the sheets are cleaned of vomit and- other mess, thanks to her. That makes her feel a little better. Fenris' bedding is washed and comfortable around him, all his books are tucked away into shelves, and there's not a single spot of this room that hasn't been scrubbed clean.

It practically sparkles; even the corners of the room, now free of webs and dust, may be tickled by light. When he opens those eyes of his, it may well blind him just how clear the room is in the light.

It was nice to have a distraction. Scrubbing at broken tile, covering the worst of it with a thick rug, hoping Fenris would _like_ the new rug… And the window, too! She can see out the window now. She couldn't the last time she visited, nor the first. While wiping away the grime, she'd fought hard not to remember the nights she'd spent propped up on her elbows lying beside him, trying to stare out that murky glass.

She'd failed, of course, but she tried.

The sunlight that had streamed in this morning had felt much less stale because of it and had painted sharp shadows over Fenris' sleeping face. It was harder to force water past his lips in such stark light of day. Looking at that gaunt face… Now, though, there's only stars, and she has to lean her forehead against the glass to peek at them.

"They're beautiful," she tells him. "Funny to think, isn't it, that only so short a time ago we could see them through the ceiling?"

Fenris doesn't speak.

"And- And funny, too, that when I offered to let you stay with me, at my house, while Varric sent those men to fix it, that you agreed. I didn't think you'd agree."

Fenris doesn't reply. He doesn't stir.

"It was lovely, staying with you. Or, you staying with me. Whichever it was. I still wonder, you know. I had only just gotten to the city and I already hated it. I wanted to… pack everything back up and run again. Keep running. What was that thing you said once-? 'Live in the sky and eat clouds'?"

She laughs bitterly. It bounces hollowly around the room.

"We aren't doing a lot of that these days, are we?"

It's hard to speak. Her throat closes suddenly, like Fenris is choking her from his place on the bed. Maybe, though, those hands are her own - it's unfair to blame Fenris for this. It's all unfair.

Merrill closes her eyes and does not cry.

"Wh..ter-"

She nearly jumps out of her chair.

"Wat- Water. _Ih._.. Please…"

She does jump then, the wooden chair legs making a horrible sound against the tiles, and winces when Fenris flinches. His eyes aren't open, his face drawn and sad, brows scrunched together in his misery.

" _Please…_ "

"Oh," she breathes. Her voice isn't any less a croak than his own. "Oh, yes, of course. Creators. Here."

He takes the water worse than when he's asleep, dribbling it over his chin and cheeks to his own discomfort. Pulled down into a jagged line, his mouth is looking more like it usually does. At least there's that.

It almost makes her laugh. A quiet sound, just a breath, which she swallows down into her anxious, thudding chest. She puts the water back onto the table next to its jug, and then- Well, she can't just sit down. Fenris is awake. His eyes, so green, are opened just a sliver. She can barely see him in the dark. He's all she sees.

"May I-" He shifts at her voice, so she places a gentle hand on his arm. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. May I light the fire? I don't know where you keep matches, though, so I'll have to-"

"G-ho ah.. _ead_."

His voice is so weak… Does his throat hurt? Is he in pain?

She quickly rises to light the fire. When it glows orange and bright, crackling too loud for her comfort, she has to see him in full again, see the too-clean shine on the old tiles and work hard not to think of how much cleaning was a mistake. It looks like no one lives here. If he had succeeded….

A sharp sting. The once unfamiliar taste of blood. Merrill's biting her lip, but it doesn't help. Nothing helps. Nothing helps.

"Am-ah... _Amata_." A harsh gulp as Fenris swallows around a dry throat, somehow louder than the fire behind her. "My amata…"

She goes to him. She's standing so close to the bed, she can feel the heavy blankets through her leggings.

"What do you need, vhenan?"

"What happened?" he whispers. Hoarse. Something's cindering at the edges; fear? Or disappointment? "What's- Where…?"

It's not quite anger which touches her tongue when she tells him, but it's something like it. Something steeped in horror, burnt like rage. His face is sad.

He doesn't apologize. She doesn't ask him to.

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally going to have more here at the end, but i felt this was an appropriate enough place to end it
> 
> 💖 thank you for reading


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